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Elenian
General information What do you get when you cross Russian with French? The Elenian Language (Еленіаскь лекс - Eleniasque lex) is a Slavic language primarily spoken in the province of Elenia. Elenian's genetic roots and history are uncertain. The language is hypothesized to be a completely independent branch from the Balto-Slavic language family with influence from south slavic languages. Today Elenian is preserved in Elenia as its official primary language (with English, Russian, French and Macedonian as secondary languages). Elenian has two dialects, the most predominant being Southern Elenian (commonly referred to as Standard Elenian), which is spoken by 76% of the population. Northern Elenian, also known as Ordevish, is a minority dialect that uses a modified Latin alphabet, which has become the official method of romanizing the Elenian language. The earliest records of written Elenian are in the Cyrillic alphabet. A switch was made to the Roman alphabet in the sixteenth century as a consequence of heavy French influence. During the mid-1800s, however, a reform was made to reintroduce the Cyrillic alphabet. This proved vastly successful, effectively restoring cyrillic as the predominant writing system within less than a decade (with exception of the Ordevish dialect). Phonology Consonants Vowels Alphabet and Pronunciation Elenian currently uses a Cyrillic-based alphabet consisting of 33 letters; ☨ Used before front vowels е, и, or і. In the latin alphabet, the letter h ''is a dependent letter used for either distinguishing phonemes or indicating a nasalized consonant (either ѧ or ѫ). Little Yus ''ѧ and Big Yus ѫ'' have remained in the cyrillic alphabet, making Elenian the only living language to still use the letters. Likewise, Yat ''ѣ '' has been retained to distinguish /ɛ/ and /e/ that have become two independent phonemes for historical purposes. The vowel ''у has shifted from back vowel /u/ to front vowel /y/ due to the influence of Greek and Europe's langues d'oïl. The digraph оу is used to represent /u/. All iotated vowels have been eliminated from the alphabet, instead using Decimal I before a vowel. Decimal I has also been used to substitute the Short I (Й'') in transliterations of other slavic names. For example, the Russian name ''Юрий could be rendered as Іурі. '' Romanization For centuries Elenian has been under influence of Romance languages, and has developed a romanized alphabet that resembles the phonetic characteristics of most languages of romance A a result, it is not as literal of an alphabet as most slavic languages that use Roman script. Firstly because of the implementation of "hard" and "soft" consonants as inspired by Romance languages, whereas placement before a front vowel (e, i, y) changes the pronunciation of the letter ''c from /k/ to /t͡s/ and g'' from /g/ to /ʒ/. Moreover it borrows the tactic of using the digraphs ''qu ''and ''gu to make an exception to this rule. Palatalization also has a few rules unique to Elenian; a soft sign (ь'') can be rendered as è in the middle of a word (although in most cases the soft sign has been eliminated in favor of ''і in the middle of words). Word finally, the soft sign changes to e'', to the effect of the silent e in French or in English. A grave accent is used to distinguish a palatalized final consonant from a final ''e. Furthermore, final ''-ье'' can be rendered ''-é'' Examples: Grammar Like Latin, words of a simple sentence in Elenian could be put in any order as long as the words are properly declined. The genitive case substitutes for the accusative in the singular for pronouns. I chased him Іѣз дошіл жо / Жо іѣз дошіл / Дошіл іѣ'жо etc. "He chased me" would be rendered Он дошіл мѧ and can be arranged in any word order since the noun declension is the sole indicator of subject and object. Vocabulary Personal Pronouns Noun Inflections Category:Languages Category:Slavic conlangs